The approaches described in this section are approaches that could be pursued, but not necessarily approaches that have been previously conceived or pursued. Therefore, unless otherwise indicated, it should not be assumed that any of the approaches described in this section qualify as prior art merely by virtue of their inclusion in this section.
Online applications may offer search engines that produce a result set based upon a search term received in a search box or field. For example, a user, browsing a web page through a browser on a personal computer, may begin to enter a name for a particular item in a search box. As the user begins to type the name of the item, the web page may be updated dynamically with one or more item names that include the entered portion of the particular item. For example, a user looking for a hotel in New York may go to a travel web site and enter “new” into a text field. The web page may be updated to present the user with several suggested searches, such as “New York” or “New Jersey”. The suggested searches may help the user to find the item the user is looking for more quickly.
In some cases, the returned suggestions may be confusing to the user. For example, if a user enters “new” and the search suggestions include “New York” and “New Jersey”, it may not be clear whether the first search term, “New York”, will search for the city of New York, places to visit in New York City, airports in and/or near New York City, or hotels in New York City. Furthermore, to focus the search results on New York, the user may be required to enter extra characters that more closely match the desired results, such as “New Y”; the added keystrokes can become a burden. Thus, more detailed search suggestions may be helpful to the user. For example, if the user selects to search for “New York”, then the user may receive results regarding places to visit, airports, and/or hotels in or around New York City and not for New Jersey.